Gorsuch questions law at the legal root of abortions in concurrence blocking limit on religious gatherings

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On the night before Thanksgiving, as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D) COVID-19 executive orders to prohibit large church gatherings amid the pandemic, Justice Neil Gorsuch weighed in with a conservative stance condemning a number of key laws that do not align with his beliefs. 

According to Law and Crime, Gorsuch’s choice of words centered on a column of constitutional law — a passage highlighting “implied right to ‘bodily integrity.” Gorsuch opted to draw a major distinction between “rights explicitly granted by the Constitution (e.g., the First Amendment rights to speech and religion) and rights presumably read between the lines of the Constitution’s text,” per the publication.

Here is an excerpt of the statements in which Gorsuch referred to Jacobson v. Massachusetts to explain his logic: Continue reading.

Gorsuch draws surprise, anger with LGBT decision

The Hill logoNeil Gorsuch, widely considered one of the more conservative justices on the Supreme Court, stunned observers and drew enmity from right-wing commenters after he authored Monday’s landmark decision guaranteeing LGBT people protection from workplace discrimination.

Gorsuch wrote in the 6-3 decision that the prohibition against discrimination on the basis of “sex” in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act also applies to gay and transgender employees.

“In Title VII, Congress adopted broad language making it illegal for an employer to rely on an employee’s sex when deciding to fire that employee,” Gorsuch wrote. “We do not hesitate to recognize today a necessary consequence of that legislative choice: An employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender defies the law.” Continue reading.

‘Everything conservatives hoped for and liberals feared’: Neil Gorsuch makes his mark at the Supreme Court

Washington Post logoSome justices ascend to the Supreme Court quietly, deferring to their elders and biding time before venturing out too far to offer their own views of the law.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, on the other hand, appears to have been shot from a cannon.

At his inaugural oral argument in April 2017, President Trump’s first choice for the Supreme Court asked 22 questions. In the term just completed, Gorsuch wrote more dissents than any other justice and typed out a whopping 337 pages of opinions. Again, more than anyone else.

View the complete September 6 article by Robert Barnes and Seung Min Kim on The Washington Post website here.

Gorsuch just handed down the most bloodthirsty and cruel death penalty opinion of the modern era

The Supreme Court just tossed decades worth of Eighth Amendment law into the wastebasket.

The Supreme Court’s opinion in Bucklew v. Precythe, which it handed down Monday on a party-line vote, is at once the most significant Eighth Amendment decision of the last several decades and the cruelest in at least as much time.

Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion tosses out a basic assumption that animated the Court’s understanding of what constitutes a “cruel and unusual” punishment for more than half a century. In the process, he writes that the state of Missouri may effectively torture a man to death — so long as it does not gratuitously inflict pain for the sheer purpose of inflicting pain.

And, on top of all of that, Gorsuch would conscript death penalty defense attorneys — men and women who often gave up lucrative legal careers to protect the lives of their clients — into the ghoulish task of laying out the method that will be used to kill those clients.

View the complete April 1 article by Ian Millhiser on the ThinkProgress website here.

Justice Neil Gorsuch says no-one can sue to stop the government from establishing religion

Theocrat Gorsuch says no American can challenge a Christian religious display on government property.

One inherent danger of allowing a religious minority to install a puppet controlled by religious fanatics in the White House is the now unfolding threat of government officially establishing religion – the Christian religion. Any American’s confidence that the U.S. Constitution is a protection against government establishing religion is grossly misplaced and, that belief is about to be disabused by the current religious conservatives responsible for adjudicating the law of the land.

Because a nearly half-century-old Supreme Court ruling prevented the government from advancing religion, the wall of separation between church and state is almost certainly going to be eviscerated by the Christian conservatives on the current Supreme Court. The crusade to demolish the wall of separation is being advanced by one of the Heritage Foundation SCOTUS nominees confirmed shortly after Trump corrupted every aspect of  the government his tiny little hands touched. However, it is noteworthy that Neil Gorsuch’s theocratic crusade is wholly supported by Trump’s other SCOTUS appointee, religious serial liar and sexual abuser Brett Kavanaugh.

View the complete March 28 article by Something Rmuse from the Daily Kos on the AlterNet website here.

Unnamed donors gave large sums to conservative nonprofit that funded Trump allies

Wellspring Committee, a politically active nonprofit organization that funds conservative groups and causes, gave $14.8 million last year to Judicial Crisis Network, which spent millions of dollars backing the Supreme Court nominations of Brett M. Kavanaugh and Neil M. Gorsuch, according to tax documents. Credit: Andrew Harnik, AP

Four unidentified donors gave nearly $17 million last year to a conservative nonprofit group that distributed funds to organizations that backed President Trump’s inaugural committee and his Supreme Court nominees Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh, according to tax documents.

Wellspring Committee, a politically active organization that funds conservative causes and groups, received $16.7 million in 2017 from four unnamed donors who gave between $250,000 and $8.9 million each, according to the group’s 2017 tax return, obtained by the advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) in Washington.

During the same period of time, the Northern Virginia-based group gave $14.8 million to another politically active nonprofit organization: the conservative Judicial Crisis Network (JCN), which spent millions of dollars backing the nominations of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.

View the complete November 27 article by Michelle Ye Hee Lee on The Washington Post website here.

Abortion and Travel Ban Rulings Are Victory for GOP Tactics on Gorsuch Image

The following article by Elizabeth Dias and Sydney Ember was posted on the New York Times website June 26, 2018:

Justice Neil Gorsuch Credit: J. Scott Applewhite, AP

WASHINGTON — The consequences of President Trump’s nomination of Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court — and the Republican blockade of President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick B. Garland in 2016 for that seat — became powerfully clear on Tuesday after the court’s conservative majority handed down major decisions to uphold Mr. Trump’s travel ban and in favor of abortion rights opponents.

Social conservatives cheered the court’s ruling that a California lawrequiring “crisis pregnancy centers” to provide abortion information likely violates the First Amendment. Some conservatives also viewed the ruling — their latest win to advance their anti-abortion cause since Mr. Trump has taken office — as another opportunity to energize their base ahead of the November elections. Continue reading “Abortion and Travel Ban Rulings Are Victory for GOP Tactics on Gorsuch Image”

Neil Gorsuch’s first major opinion is a decision allowing bosses to steal wages from their workers

The following article by Ian Millhiser was posted on the ThinkProgress website May 21, 2018:

Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee is exactly who you think he is.

Credit: Eric Thayer/Getty Images

The Supreme Court held on Monday that employers can force their employees to sign away many of their rights to sue their employers. As a practical matter, Monday’s decision in Epic Systems v. Lewis will enable employers to engage in small-scale wage theft with impunity, so long as they spread the impact of this theft among many employees.

Neil Gorsuch, who occupies the seat that Senate Republicans held open for a year until Donald Trump could fill it, wrote the Court’s 5-4 decision. The Court split along party lines.

Epic Systems involves three consolidated cases, each involving employment contracts cutting off employees’ rights to sue their employer in a court of law. In at least one of these cases, the employees were required to sign away these rights as a condition of starting their job. In another, existing workers were told to sign away their rights if they wanted to keep working. Continue reading “Neil Gorsuch’s first major opinion is a decision allowing bosses to steal wages from their workers”

‘He’s not weak, is he?’: Inside Trump’s quest to alter the judiciary

The following article by Philip Rucker, Josh Dawsey and Ashley Parker was posted on the Washington Post website December 19, 2017:

Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, center, and Justice Anthony Kennedy, right, listen as President Trump speaks at Gorsuch’s swearing-in ceremony in the White House Rose Garden on April 10. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)

The collapse of three of President Trump’s judicial nominations in the span of a week has embarrassed the White House, revealed weaknesses in its vetting process and threatened to cause Senate Republicans to apply more scrutiny to the president’s picks.

In their push to fill scores of vacancies on federal circuit and district courts at the historic pace demanded by Trump, White House officials have overlooked vulnerabilities in the backgrounds of some nominees. Critics allege that White House counsel Donald McGahn, who is overseeing the process, has sacrificed traditional qualifications for ideological purity and youth. Continue reading “‘He’s not weak, is he?’: Inside Trump’s quest to alter the judiciary”

Trump talked about rescinding Gorsuch’s nomination

The following article by Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey and Robert Barnes was posted on the Washington Post website December 19, 2017:

President Trump has announced Judge Neil Gorsuch of Colorado as his pick for the Supreme Court. (Victoria Walker/The Washington Post)

For nearly eight months, President Trump has boasted that appointing Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court ranks high among his signature achievements.

But earlier this year, Trump talked about rescinding Gorsuch’s nomination, venting angrily to advisers after his Supreme Court pick was critical of the president’s escalating attacks on the federal judiciary in private meetings with legislators. Continue reading “Trump talked about rescinding Gorsuch’s nomination”